It is my pleasure and my privilege to introduce you to 93 years young quilter Mary Pauline Laughlin. It has been an honour to get to know her through our interviews via email, postal mail, and the telephone. I only wish I could meet her in person as well.

Pauline was born in 1912 in Oklahoma where dust storms eventually caused her family to move to Denver. There, her father worked as sewing machine mechanic for the Great Western Sugar Beet factory. Later on her family moved again, this time to a dairy farm in Illinois. Pauline grew up on the dairy farm and was no stranger to hard work.

“As a girl, I used to milk 15 cows the old-fashioned way every morning and then help to deliver the milk before going to school. My father drove our two-seater Ford car and sometimes he took the back seats out to make room for the milk carts. I got out of the car to deliver bottles of milk to all of the homes along our route, but when we delivered to cafes and stores, my father got out to do the deliveries because the milk crates were too large and heavy for me to carry."

"I got used to hard work. After school we would bottle the milk and try to sell it all around the town. Times were hard and there was a lot of competition. We couldn’t even get 12 cents a quart for our milk at the time, but when I think of the years that I slopped the hogs and took care of the sows and gathered and sold eggs from our chickens, I’m just glad I learned to work hard. I’ve kept busy and been happy,” she says.

Pauline graduated from Nevada high school in Missouri school and went on to business school. Afterwards, she worked for an attorney for about a year and was, she says, “a whiz at typing. I typed briefs right out of law books and I could easily pass a 15 minute test at 70 words a minute.”

Her mother taught her to sew and to quilt when she was still a child and by the time Pauline was 11, she was sewing her own clothes. Her Dad built them a quilt frame and braced it so the frame would not give as they worked. It was made just the right size for her mother and sat on the floor like a table. The two would spread and layer their quilts on the floor, then her mother pinned the quilts to two by fours. Her mother would quilt one side then move her chair to the other side of the frame to continue quilting.

At four feet ten inches in height, Pauline could not reach the center of the quilts, so her mother, who was five feet six, did the centers while she worked on the outer edges. Pauline was given the quilt frame after her marriage. Later on, her own children helped her with quilting, too. One would push the needle down from the top of the quilt and the other, who sat underneath the quilt frame, would push it back up again.

Her family moved to Arkansas in 1933.

“I met my husband at a canning factory in Pea Ridge. We were married in 1937. He’s been dead for about 15 years now.” She and her husband ran a mechanics shop and Pauline worked in the grease alongside her husband. “I never was afraid to get my hands dirty,” she says. “They can always be washed.”

Pauline used feed sacks to make her quilts. She made dye water using walnut hulls, which, she said, produced “a nasty looking greenish-brown colour.” She used a big iron kettle in her yard to do the dyeing. Many of the quilts she made at that time were tied rather than quilted.

In 1958 when the Daisy BB Gun factory opened in Rogers, Pauline applied for a job and worked there as a punch press operator for 20 years. Shortly afterwards, she started displaying at mall craft shows.

Coaxed by a co-worker at Daisy, she took the lessons they offered in leather craft, and then learned to make billfolds in her spare time. She made her first leather purse 37 years ago, then started making purses and fabric tote bags as well. No two of her finished products are alike. Pauline can make a purse with a special compartment for a cell phone, or match a quilt to a wallpaper border. There is not much, if anything, this crafter cannot do and is not willing to try.

Pauline's daughters carry her purses as do some of the women in the booths around her at craft fairs. Her purses are her own designs. She makes them from Naugahyde in colours and styles to match the ensembles of the women who order them. She has sold up to 34 purses during just one craft fair and taken orders for 30 more. “I’ll tell you something else. They won’t fall to pieces like some I’ve seen either. A good purse can last years, and should,” she says.

Although her crafting began as a hobby, it soon turned into a business because she needed the money to support her family. With five children to raise, a husband who became ill, and money required for medicine, it took all Pauline could scrape together to keep her family going. She began selling her handmade quilts, leather purses, and specialty items at craft fairs. "I drove everywhere within a four State area that allowed me to make it back home by nightfall," she explains.

She studied rug hooking from nationally recognized teachers and even teaches antique rug hooking herself. She exhibits her rug hooking, quilts and other crafts at the Frisco Station Mall every year and has won national awards for her rug hooking. Several of her pieces have been featured in national Pearl K. McGowan exhibits.

She makes her traditional hooked rugs on burlap in the style of the early American pioneer using their same methods. “The only difference being that I have better scissors, cutters, and crochet hooks,” says Pauline. “I have a cutter that cuts wool into strings. I use a small, metal crochet hook to pull the wool through. Then I cut off the ends. After the rug is finished, I steam it. That shrinks both the canvas-burlap and the wool. I prefer antique hooking because it is more shaded and intricate. I also like to stamp my rugs and quilts with my own designs.” As a member of the rug hooker arts and crafts guilds, her work is shown across Arkansas and she has to work hard to stay ahead of her orders. She has won more than 60 blue and red ribbons for her work as well as People’s Choice Awards.

At first Pauline made the rugs for her family and for pleasure but then began selling them as well. A store in a nearby resort bought everything she made.

Her work is set apart from that of other rug hookers by the fact that she often uses more shades than are normally used. She dyes her wool into eight different shades instead of the usual six. Some of her rugs show pictures while others are of natural scenes. One of her pieces is made entirely of white pantyhose which she purchased by the pound, then cut and dyed.

After teaching herself to make purses, Pauline turned to textile painting. “The first thing I learned to paint was foam - you know, those refrigerator magnets that used to be popular. I kept getting better at it and started designing patterns and painting them on shirts, clothing, and quilts."

In 1978 Pauline retired from the Daisy factory. She saw an ad for a longarm quilting machine and purchased it. It was set up on a wooden table so large that it stretched wall to wall. It was too difficult for her to reach across so she had to crawl underneath it to get to her closet. Needing a bigger house, she put both it and her longarm machine up for sale. Afterwards, she bought herself a brand new longarm which she keeps in her garage.

“My longarm quilting machine cost $6,000 when new. It was the one indulgence I allowed myself after my husband’s death. Someone wanted to buy my old one that worked by hand, and it was beginning to bother my chest so I sold it. Then, after I had paid all of our bills, and paid everything off, I bought the new one. I knew it would eventually pay for itself.”

Pauline didn't wait for the company’s representatives to come and teach her the use of her new machine. Instead, she taught herself to work with it. When they arrived, they were very surprised to find her not only using it, but already quilting on it for others.

Although she had learned to quilt as a young girl, she did not think of it as a source of income until after her retirement. “It’s just something I’ve always liked. I don’t have to depend on someone else to do it for me,” she explains.

Her quilts are very popular and no two of her creations are alike. Many feature her own painted designs for which she often receives special orders and requests. For example, she recently created a football theme quilt for a couple in Dallas. She used a platter to draw the football and added numbers and lines to represent the yard lines. They were delighted with it.

Pauline designs her own patterns for everything and continues to produce a large amount of work every year. Last year she made 50 crib quilts, 16 Noah's Ark quilts, and 4 king-sized quilts. Quilters also send her their quilt tops to be quilted. She also made hooked rugs and purses.

Pauline's Craft Show Display: Purses, Quilts, Hooked Rugs Owl Hooked Rugs These were displayed at the P.C. McCowan National Show, Quakertown, PA

Click the Page 2 button to continue Pauline's story.

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